Farms Three

Okay, you'll read my apologies in the further posts. This post is called Farm 3. But there are two posts that were supposed to come before it, but they're really coming after it. Same thing. You get the idea.

So this farm used to be a nursery, and also had a field of cajus and maracuja. Okay, so I don't really remember. But two fields of fruit trees. Very neat. I really loved the nursery. It was sort of dilapidated, and out of use, but still had lots of plants, and a lot that looked like they were very happy that people stopped caring for them (read: plants gone wild!). 

Also, as you'll notice, there was a friendly cow at this farm. Almost all the farms we'd looked at were huge properties, many acres (or hectacres here), so the majority of them rent their land out to cows. All three farms we looked at rented out their land. Most of the cows here are Brahmas. Sort of the same kind that are in India? I have no idea. Not the black and white milk cows you see in the US.

 Mmm, pretty right? The stems and leaves were sort of beigey grey. Nature, you're such a designer!

 Nursery gone wild! Orchids galore!!! I wanted so badly to steal so many plants, since they looked like most of them were left to the earth anyway.

 Don't worry plants, I'll rescue you!!! Come live at my house!

 What in the world kind of plant is this? Little white bubbles on their stems?

 Hidden behind the relatively small mango tree was one of the houses on the property. Pretty tiny.

Hi friendly cow. It was licking my bag like crazy! I didn't have any snacks or anything either, I have no idea why he was licking. Anyway, he distracted us all (me, Toby and the guy showing us the land) and BAM the cow behind him (see him in the picture sneaking up?) jumped up and started....errr....seducing the other one! Just like that! Oh nature.

Another cool thing about this place was that we drove pretty much straight up (at an angle I'm sure would be illegal anywhere else) for a really long time, and there was still this little lake/pond way up there. I have no idea how water stays up so high.

Local Art

Heee heheeee haaa. I love this guy. I laugh every time I see him. He sits near some sort of science center. He's huge. Like 20 feet tall.

Favorite Building.

This is one of my favorite buildings. It's big and curved, and the whole curve faces the ocean, so I assume all the rooms come with a view. Unfortunately, we've heard the renting situation is pretty bad and the building is scheduled to be torn down. Sad.

Sugar Cane-ing!

Hey hoo! I thought I already posted about this, but honestly, cannot find it, so maybe I didn't? We go to sugar cane farms every now and then for the husband's work. It's pretty fun. They're beautiful pieces of land, in the NorthEast of the country they're on rolling hills with sky for miles. Or kilometers. 

Either way, beautiful. Recently we went to a family friend's farm. It was great. We got some super cool free hats, saw the landscape...you know, things you do on a sugar farm. Saw a giant toad.

 I have no idea what fruit this is. I'm normally a pretty great fruit/tree sleuth, but tonight, google fails me. I've come up with a handful of answers, but I'm pretty sure none of them are right. So I'm not putting a name on this right now. But I've seen it growing in some places. What a great description.

 Errr... This was supposed to be a picture of the tree, but as the tree above, can't remember what it was. Whoops! Good thing this is just a blog for funsies, not for education.

 MANGO TREE! Yes! Finally I can tell you why I took a picture, and what it was of. Okay, I get it, I post tons of mango trees, but I do think they're mighty pretty, and mangos are mighty delicious. See all the pinkish on top of the back tree? Those are blooms. Yay for mango season!

 Rolling hills of the Northeast. So pretty. Because of these beautiful rolling hills they have to farm sugarcane completely different than the rest of the country. Actually, that's a good idea for a post. Maybe next week.

 Free hats! Heyooooo!

 Foot in picture for size reference. And, note that I have a pretty large foot. American 9.5. Rest of the world, about a 41. So that's a really big toad. Speaking of shoe sizes I was in the mall the other day, just browsing the shoe section, and in this section I found absolutely none in my size. My feet aren't huge, but I guess in Brazil, much larger than the majority.

 He's puffed up and standing tall. He was maaaad!

 Hills of sugarcane.

All the men were talking so I sneaked off. I thought I could try and take a bite of the cane without anyone noticing, but apparently someone was watching me with the camera.

Random Pictures from the past

Just some randoms.

 Are the big beers in the US as big as the big beers here? Look at that height! Huge beer! And a random 473 ml. What sort of amount is that? Hopefully it's a round number in some other measuring system.

 Baobab Tree!

 This particular baobab is sort of famous. I've read about it once or twice in different places. For today you get to read this article HERE. Hope it's a good one!

 So far I've found three amazing graffiti walls in town. There's one on the way to the airport, and I swear it's got to be over a mile long. This one is in downtown Recife. There's another one in downtown Recife too. Super great graffiti. My Mom actually told me she is mailing me an article about Brazilian graffiti. I'm sure it's an artist from Rio though. They're so fancy down there.

Moving Sand

Our little reef in front of our house is great. I love watching it grow, move, change. Well, I guess it's mostly the ocean. How crazy is the ocean? The sand is constantly moving around in front of us. Sometimes the first part of the reef is almost completely covered in sand, and sometimes from the point where the reef meets the ocean, to the point where it reaches the large rock barrier, it's completely barren of sand. I try to take pictures when I think it's moved a bunch. I hope these don't just look like a whole bunch of the sam pictures to you.

May

July

early August

mid August

Big Cloud

We're on the 13th floor (that's right, US residents, they have 13th floors here) and we look over the ocean and sometimes the clouds cover so much of the ocean. The other day I took three pictures of this one cloud that look gigantic. I put the pictures together and it doesn't look like much. But it was a big cloud. The view here sure is grand.

You can click on the image to make it bigger. Get really close to the screen and imagine this is your view too.